Wednesday 9 February 2011 03.00 EST
First published on Wednesday 9 February 2011 03.00 EST

It's always good to learn a new word, even if it's made up and highly site-specific. "What we're doing is Bosphorising," Edward Stourton hears, as he talks to locals on the shore of the Bosphorus (Radio 4). It means to swoon over the mesmerising view. Stourton is fast becoming Radio 4's equivalent to Bruce Parry, exploring terrains with rich religious, political and historical significance, but with less scary things to eat and drink. This was a comprehensive introduction to the waterway, with a strong sense of its commanding beauty, sometimes terrible dangers, and contested ownership of the land that fringes it.

He ends one day watching the sunset with someone lucky enough to have stupendous views of the busy Bosphorus from his balcony. They drink raki and muse on how sitting there is "like having a front-row seat at a drama". The moment was, says Stourton, "a really intoxicating piece of Bosphorising".

Richard Coles, at a Norwegian ice festival in The Music That Melted (Radio 4), drinks vegan bouillon as he listens to otherworldly music played on instruments made of ice. "It is the sound of the north," says one musician. When the festival is over, they leave the instruments behind. "They melt back," a musician says, a little forlornly, in one of the week's most extraordinary listens.